Monthly Archives: October 2007

There are two ways of dealing with the new pressure that clas­si­cal music go out and earn its living. One is accom­mo­da­tion, which can entail painful losses and suffer from its own excesses (the “dumbing down” that every­body except manage­ment deplores).…Orchestras have accom­mo­dated by modi­fy­ing their program­ming in a fashion that favors the Itzies and Pinkies and little divas. Composers have accom­mo­dated by adopting more “acces­si­ble” styles. Love it or hate it, such accom­mo­da­tion is a normal part of the evolu­tion­ary history of any art.

Oh, right. It’s not that I just happen to like triads and melodies and pulse, or anything. It’s just that I’ve gone and caved to the market’s demands. Sure. Acces­si­ble. Thank you, Mr. Taruskin, for calling me (and the rest of us) out.

My apolo­gies to those of you using Firefox. I’ve been fresh­en­ing most areas of the site and have yet to get them to display correctly. Safari seems to do a good job, though, as does Internet Explorer, oddly enough. I’m working on a fix in the meantime.

U P D A T E : Things should look fine for the time being. Please let me know if you encounter any problems.

I went to a pretty remark­able concert last night. The Yale Schola Cantorum performed Sofia Gubaidulina’s Sonnenge­sang: The Canticle of the Sun, a sprawl­ing setting of St. Francis of Assisi’s text for chorus, percus­sion, and cello soloist (the afore­men­tioned Hannah Collins). After reading Matt Barnson’s excel­lent program notes during the interval, I was fairly certain I was going to hate the piece, not least of all because I’d heard it was 40 minutes long, and also about some reli­gious mumble-jumble. (“In each of my works I expe­ri­ence the Eucharist as fantasy”? Please, spare us.) Then they brought the tuned water-goblets out on stage, and I really expected the worst.

Actually, though, I shouldn’t have worried, because we’re talking about Simon Carring­ton here (he’s the conduc­tor). He’s a man of taste. You should see the convert­ible he some­times drives. It was because of Simon that I got to play in Dallapiccola’s Canti di Prigio­nia a few years backwhat a hair-raising piece.

Canticle of the Sun was also hair-raising, in a completely differ­ent, much more ecstatic sort of way. The cellists has to act as a sort of protag­o­nist figure, a wanderer in search of some sort of reli­gious salvationwhich I under­stand was achieved, to judge by the awesome F-sharp major closing minutes. Over the course of the piece, Hannah had to de-tune her C string down to A flat, then back up again, get up and play a gong, super­ball a bass drum (and let me just say, she super-balled it), and go bow a flex­a­tone in the chorus’s face. There’s a really thin line here between drama and cheesi­ness (the bad kind, not the Alex kind)but I was not, at any point, embar­rassed for the sake of anyone onstage, so I think that means every­thing was just fine.

There were some real musical high points, too. The whole language was very fresh-sounding, espe­cially in the more static sections (at one partic­u­larly engross­ing point, the percus­sion­ists had to play their water-glasses for about five minutes straight, without pausing to re-wet their fingers. How did they do it??) I was also really intrigued by the large-scale gestures in the musicfor instance, the cello’s obvi­ously symbolic and incred­i­bly protracted ascent from low A-flat to high god-knows-what toward the end of the piece, and how the opening solo intro­duces the chorus with a jaunty glis­sando. There were, of course, some sections where my mind wandered, but then, I get distracted during Webern’s Fünf Orch­ester­stücke, so perhaps I’m not the best judge.

Simon warned all of us before­hand that there was a great deal of silence in the piece, and please not to cough, shuffle our program, call our mother, etc. and I think it made the audience slightly on edge. There was defi­nitely more coughing as a result. Also, one unfor­tu­nate choris­ter forgot to silence his ringer, and it went off, painfully, in his tuxedo pocket. I don’t think it would have been so painful if everyone weren’t paying such close atten­tion to the music, so I guess the jolt in my stomach was a good sign.

As a lifelong Mac user (and pursuer of all things Apple) I’m excited about the Leopard release tomorrow (though I probably won’t install it on my over­bur­dened old power­book). But I have to say, what is with the gross sci-fi pack­ag­ing? I feel as if I’m about to be swal­lowed by a purple nebula of backed-up files. Part of what I enjoy about being a Mac user is the whole “thought­ful mini­mal­ism” design culture, but lately, somebody’s been slather­ing on the useless eye-candy with alarming abandon.

On a completely unre­lated note, I made Pad Thai today from scratch. It was my first time working with Tamarind. I wonder how many people know that this slightly sugges­tive-looking pod is the main flavor­ing in Pad Thai. I certainly didn’t. It’s really sour, so you have to combine it with an equal amount of sugar. The first batch I made came out of the pan as a single crunchy, oily unit. The next two batches improved dras­ti­cally (you have to cook Pad Thai one serving at a time, or else it doesn’t cook evenly). The whole project seems kind of ludi­crous, because I could just hit up any of the five places within 200 feet of my apart­ment that sell perfectly good Pad Thai. But that’s exactly why I wanted to see if I could make it myself, because it’s one of those things I’ve only ever eaten at a restau­rant. Actually, people in Thailand never eat it at restau­rants; it’s sold only on the streets there, the equiv­a­lent of our hot-dog and pretzel carts.

I was reading Pitch­fork today and saw a great big banner ad for the always-insight­ful Alex Ross’s new book, The Rest is Noise. I can’t remember the last time I saw an ad for any book, much less a gigantic tome about 20th-century music. I guess Pitch­fork knows its target demo­graphic, and I am it. (I don’t have a copy yet, but I’m looking forward to it.)

How did two months pass by so quickly? Oh, right, I am in grad school now. I forgot how busy “school” makes a person. High­lights: working with Alma and Miki on the Ligeti horn trio, chilling (in the truest sense of the word) with Ingram Marshall, getting to know my new composer colleagues, 8:20 AM “Hearing” with Panetti (respeck, Joan), getting intimate with the gamba, Diya’s and my birth­days (cele­brated in typi­cally glam­orous fashion by seeing LCD Soundsys­tem and Arcade Fire), the Free New Radio­head (on my birthday, no less), harvest at the Yale Organic Garden, learning the ins and outs of the Fred Plaut Record­ing Studio, taking Intro Typog­ra­phy (this blog is begin­ning to hurt my eyes), this sudden Fall weather.

And compos­ing. My new piano piece for Richard Dyer, Sorbet, is compleat, as is Play it by Ear, the nonet for Hindemith Ensemble. Right now I’m working on a piece for Marie Dalby’s trio, Flying Forms (gamba, baroque violin, and harp­si­chord). It’s inter­est­ing trying to adapt my gestural language to unfa­mil­iar instru­ments and a completely differ­ent style of playing. My goal is a synthe­sis of Baroque idioms and my own harmonic language, so that if you started listen­ing at any random point, there’d be a few seconds of total confu­sion when you wonder what century you’re in.

Next up—a piece for the superb cellist Hannah Collins. Expect very few (if any) premières this Fall, and then a string of them in the Spring.